On the Firing Line

CHAPTER TWELVE

The red-brown veldt stretched away to the sky-line, sixty miles distant. Level as it looked, it was nevertheless a succession of softly rolling ridges dotted with clumps of dried sagebrush and spotted here and there with heaps of black volcanic rocks. Far to the northward, a thin line of poplars and willows marked the bed of a river. Beyond that, again, the air was thick with smoke from acres of burning veldt. The days were full of dust, and the nights were full of frost; it was the month of June, and winter was upon the land.

The camp was taking a well-earned rest. For days, the men had swept over the veldt, following hard on the trail of a Boer general who only made himself visible now and then by a spatter of bullets, when his convoy train was delayed at a difficult ford. It had been a week of playing pussin-the-corner over a charred and dusty land, where the only roads were trails trodden out to powder by the hoofs of those that had gone before. Both men and mounts were wellnigh exhausted, and the officers had decreed a halt.

The strain had been intense. Now, with the relaxing of it, its memory vanished, and the halt swiftly took upon itself the appearance of a school holiday. Laughing and chaffing each other, groups of men loitered here and lounged there, smoking, writing letters, and taking stout, unlovely stitches in their time-worn khaki clothing. At one side of the camp was the tent of the mess sergeant, equipped like a portable species of corner grocery. Near by, Paddy apparently was in his element, presiding over his camp-kitchen, a vast bonfire encircled with a dozen iron pots. At the farther edge of the camp Weldon was umpiring a game of football between his own squadron and a company of the Derbys. Owing to the athletic zeal of the hour, it was big-side, and Weldon was too busy in keeping his eye upon so many players to pay much attention to his own loneliness.

In all truth, however, he was lonely. The week since he had rejoined his squadron had dragged perceptibly. Captain Frazer was in Cape Town; Carew was still in hospital at Johannesburg where, under the eyes of Alice Mellen and her cousin, he was fast resuming his old finical habits. Dingy and veldt-stained though he might be, Carew at heart would always remain the exquisite. However, exquisite that he was bound to be, he was even more the soldier, and his gay eyes had clouded, as he had wrung Weldon's hand in parting.

"Lucky dog!" he said enviously. "I am off duty for two weeks more, and you are going back to the thick of things. One must take it as it comes; but I say, old man, don't forget me when the bullets begin to pelt at you again."

And Weldon had been better than his promise. He had thought of Carew, day and night, for the entire week, thought of him and missed him acutely. Carew was an ideal comrade in that he never, under any circumstances, took himself in earnest.

A leg which will carry a man on horseback is by no means fit for football. Weldon, finished player that he was, found it tame work to umpire a team whose sole idea of tactics was to get there in any way that offered itself. Half an hour sufficed; then, appointing an understudy, he walked away in search of Paddy. From the midst of a torrent of instructions to his quartette of black subordinates, Paddy's voice sang out a cheery greeting.

"Come along, little feller! Come and get something to eat. It's hungry you ought to be, the day, after the way you've been walking all over the country on horseback and an empty stomach. Try this, as a sample of your dinner, and sit down by the edge of the fire, whilst, and tell me how it tastes."

The iron spoon scraped lustily over the iron dixey. Then Weldon returned them both with a low bow.

"Like yourself, Paddy, short and sweet."

Paddy brandished the spoon, weapon-wise.

"Short is it, you little Canuck! So is a pepperpot short; but it holds a hell of a flavor. Leave Paddy a gun in his hand, and his short legs will keep up with your long ones, when it's the firing line that's before him."

"The old sing-song, Paddy. Give us something new."

"So will I, when I get my wishing. Till then, you'll hear it over and over again. A man of my temper, little one, will never rest content at a firing line that's all surrounded about with ten-quart pots of boiling beef."

"Why don't you resign, then?"

"Resigned! How can I be resigned? I'm a chunk of dynamite in a suet-pot, hard to manage and ready to go off at any time that something strikes me. Meantime, I am like what they say is dirt: matter out of place."

"Then why don't you get out?" Weldon queried.

"I am out of place now, I'm telling you," Paddy returned, as he pensively rested his cheek upon the bowl of the spoon in his hand.

"Yes; but why not refuse to stay here as cook?"

Sorrowfully Paddy shook his head, spoon and all.

"That's what I did do, little one."

"And what happened?"

"This." The spoon came into evidence once more. "They blarneyed me up and they blarneyed me down, and they said nobody could cook like Paddy. Anybody could shoot a baker's dozen of Boers; but only one man in the camp could fill up the boys to give them a fit and level stomach for the battle. And here I am, and here I'm like to be, till the new moon in the heavens turns to a curly strip of bully beef. If I'd known the Captain was about to escape to Cape Town, it's Paddy that would have escaped with him, hanging on to the tail of his coat. Saint Patrick's vipers! What's that?"

A hum, a spat, and a little spurt of red dust rolled lazily upward. Then another hum followed. There was a scurry of men, a squeak of leather, the light clashing of rifles snatched from the stack; and the troops were off.

Beside them, the nearer hills rose in brick-red patches against the sky. Farther away, the brick color changed to gray and, still beyond, to misty purple. Before them rolled the open, khaki-colored veldt dotted in one direction by a ragged spot of black that flowed over the crest of each ridge and vanished from sight for a moment before rising from the hollow to flow over the crest of the ridge beyond. And towards the ragged spot of black there rushed onward, at an ever-lessening distance, the khaki-colored streak of the foremost rank of C Squadron, led for the moment by a little gray broncho whose hoofs touched the ground only to spurn it backwards.

The chase was long and hot; but the end was in sight. Directly across the path of the quarry stretched a low line of willows showing the course of the stream beneath, and, a few hundred feet this side of the willows, scattered clumps of green marked as many scattered dwellings. By the largest clump, the quarry halted and turned to bay, and the pursuers, unable to check their speed, rode down upon it and crashed through its ranks, regardless of the pitiless fire, then, sweeping around on the arc of a mammoth circle, took up their position in the shelter of a walled kraal, only a few hundred yards away. Then for a moment they halted, face to face and in absolute silence.

Even after her mad race, the little gray broncho was breathing deeply and easily; but Weldon could feel his own breath come short. Banged in open order before him were a full half-hundred of the enemy, bearded, black-coated, bandoliered, grim and stolid and ripe of years. Beside him were the new captain of the troop and seven men. They were and alert; but there were only nine of them in all. And the rest of the troop, it seemed to him, were half the veldt-length away. Vaguely he wondered whether their distant khaki coats would look as purple as did the distant khaki-colored hills. Then, quite inconsequently, as he raised his rifle, he noticed that one of the Boers had a button hanging loosely on its threads from the front of his coat. He was rather surprised, the next instant, to see the Boer pitch forward headlong in the dust. It was some time afterward that he thought to connect the falling with the crack of his own rifle.

Piggie bounded sidewise, as the mount of the trooper next Weldon dropped and lay whimpering like a hurt child. Then she steadied to the touch of Weldon's hand upon her neck. It was not the first time he had guided her, unscathed, through a leaden shower. She would trust him yet once again. As he raised his rifle, her wiry legs were as steady as four iron rods. He saw another Boer fall and yet another and a third; but one khaki-colored figure lay stiffly beside him, and another was dragging itself away to a corner of the kraal, to give greater space to its unwounded comrades. And still the bullets whizzed about them, thick and ever thicker.

Piggie shied again. This time a bullet had grazed her neck, and the sight of the narrow sear filled Weldon's mind with a dull, unreasoning rage. Brutal to aim at the plucky mounts who bore their riders so gallantly into the flight where all defensive power was denied themselves! He paused long enough to pat the firm gray neck, to feel the answering pressure against his hand. Then he raised his rifle again and took careful aim, as he breathed a wordless prayer that chance might guide his bullet into the man who had scarred his faithful friend. Another Boer dropped; Weldon hoped it was by his own bullet. Then both he and the gray broncho pricked up their ears as, close on their flank, they heard the beating of galloping hoofs.

In the shock of the scrimmage that followed, there was scant time to take thought of friend or of foe. On the heels of his new captain as, of old, he had been on the heels of Captain Frazer, Weldon and the gray broncho were in the thick of the fight. Then, as the Boers sullenly fell backwards, Weldon became aware of a familiar voice in his ears.

"Whisht, little feller! It's Paddy," the voice said in a spooky undertone, as its owner ranged up alongside the gray broncho.

"Paddy!" Weldon stared at him in unfeigned astonishment. "What in the name of heaven are you doing here, man?"

With perfect composure Paddy squared himself in the saddle.

"Little Canuck dear, as I told you before, heaven is a state of eternal peace, and therefore an undesirable abode in these hot times. I prefer a whiff of brimstone, myself; and, by the powers, I've been getting, it." As he spoke, he took off his hat and showed a neat trio of holes in the left brim.

"But how did you come here, Paddy?" Weldon asked again.

"Took your advice to heart, my jewel, kicked over my pan of fat and jumped into the fire. Which, being put into straight English, I swiped a horse and rode off with the rest of the boys on the tail of the serpent." Weldon gasped, as he realized the enormity of the crime. Then he laughed. In his haste to gain possession of a mount, Paddy had taken no thought for his armament. His sole weapon was the huge iron spoon, still grasped in his left hand.

"Whose horse did you take, Paddy?"

"I d'know. I never looked to see. I popped my toe into the stirrup and came away, hot-foot; but," Paddy paused for a deliberate wink; "as I was leaving camp, I thought I heard the voice of that pigeon-toed little cockney Parrott, him that used to stub his toes on the wall at Piquetberg Road, acalling out that some one had mislaid his horse and he couldn't find it. I was sorry; but I was in a divil of a haste and couldn't stop to condole with him then."

"But, Paddy, they'll run you out of camp for this," Weldon remonstrated dutifully.

Paddy's shoulder mounted towards his left ear. "I'm thinking I have run myself out, and that's just what I was meaning to do. I've been a captain with four lieutenants under me. Any one of them can sling the pepper and the salt, and they're welcome; but not one has the fighting blood in his veins as I have. Let them mind their kettles and leave me to mind the enemy."

"And if they won't let you go back?"

"Then I'll ship myself straight down to Cape Town, and take service with Captain Frazer. He can fight with the best of them, and he knows I'm a man. It's riding at his heels I'll be, henceforth and forevermore."

Turning, Weldon looked long into the jovial Irish face, and at the hunchy figure that joggled to and fro in the saddle, with no heed to the rhythm of his horse's pace.

"Who taught you to ride, Paddy?" he asked at length.

For an instant, a lump in Paddy's left cheek betrayed the whereabouts of his tongue. Then quietly he made answer, "Sure, little feller, it must have been the grace of Saint Patrick. Nobody else has ever took a hand in the training of me. But I'll back him against all the riding masters in London and Aldershot."

And the result showed that Paddy's confidence was not misplaced.